Parliament passed a resolution on November 2 that requires from the Cabinet to present to the MPs information on the implementation of the national budget and the impact of this implementation on the negotiations with the International Monetary Fund. The parliamentary groups of the ruling Simeon II National Movement, its coalition partner - the largely ethnic Turks' Movement for Rights and Freedoms and the Socialist-dominated Coalition for Bulgaria voted in favour of the resolution. Finance Minister Milen Velchev dismissed allegations made during the debate by his predecessor Muravey Radev, MP of the United Democratic Forces (UDF), that the incumbent government found a budget surplus of BGN 130 M when it took office. Velchev said that his government found outstanding interest expenditures of BGN 300 M, hospitals' budgets of a BGN 100 M deficit and municipal budgets of a BGN 181 M deficit. Velchev also spoke about the government's tax policy regarding the sale of vacation packages abroad. During the debate, Petur Zhotev, MP of the UDF and former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, opposed the introduction of value added tax on such services. He recommended that the Cabinet considers the opinion of the Parliament when negotiating with the International Monetary Fund.. "The Government does not want to introduce this tax but was compelled to do so by actions of the previous government," Velchev commented. He recalled that the Ivan Kostov cabinet agreed with the IMF to impose the tax and then the 38th Parliament deferred it by one year until the beginning of 2002. "The IMF saw this as a cheap Balkan trick but this can work only once, not twice," the Finance Minister said.

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